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Kiosk/Data Entry Mode for Forms, Form Handlers and Landing Pages

Today we released a new option on Pardot forms, form handlers, and landing pages which adds an option to capture form and form handler data without applying a prospect cookie to the browser. This is very useful in situations where data for multiple prospects is being entered from the same browser, for example at a trade show booth, and solves the problem of multiple prospects getting “mashed” together and sharing the same activity because of multiple submissions from the same browser.

For forms, find this option on the third step of the form wizard, under the “Advanced” tab.

For form handlers, find this option as a new checkbox under the “Success Location”.

For landing pages, this option is “inherited” from whichever form you choose to display. If that form has Kiosk/Data Entry Mode enabled, the landing page will not send a cookie to the browser.

Forms and form handlers with this option enabled will record the prospect submission and run completion actions, send auto-responders, etc just like normal. However upon viewing and submission, the browser will not be cookied or tracked. Additionally the prospect’s activity record will only show an activity for the form, form handler, or landing page submission with no “view” activity just prior.

If the browser already has an existing visitor/prospect cookie, this information will be ignored and any progressive profiling will not activate. Hence for forms, activating this option removes the option to include the “Not You?” link (because it no longer applies), and also implicitly activates the “Always display form after submission” option.

13 thoughts on “Kiosk/Data Entry Mode for Forms, Form Handlers and Landing Pages”

Guys, this is brilliant! We’ve been cobbling together web forms, form handlers, and the like for a couple of years now to get this to *sort of* work. Thank you for making it infinitely easier and more effective!

For those wondering about useful applications of this, I’d be happy to tell you how we’ve used lead capture forms in trade show booths. Just imagine, NO MORE COLLATERAL in your booth, plus you get to instantly deliver trackable follow-up to the prospect via email.

Sorry Brian… I hadn’t turned on the email notifications for this comment thread!

We’ve had great success with setting up an entirely paperless trade show booth. The booth design was quite minimalistic, with 2-3 giant iMac computers as the feature. These alone were enough to attract the attention of many passers-by who want to gawk.

Using on-site internet connections, we leveraged three browser tabs that were pre-configured:

1. A recorded video demo of the product that could be played on full-screen mode while the kiosk was not in use.

2. A tab with bookmarked live demo sites of existing customers using our client’s solution, so booth staff could easily toggle over and give real-life walk-throughs to a prospect (much better way to talk about your product features & benefits than PPT slides or a recorded demo).

3. An ‘information request’ screen that was a hidden, but publicly-accessible web page which had large thumbnails of 4-6 key information pieces (a couple of case studies, a couple of product brochures, and 1-2 other timely pieces like news clippings or other). These info pieces were built into a form so you could select checkboxes for each piece you wanted to receive, then input your name, company, and email address to have them sent to you electronically. This screen worked as self-serve when necessary, but also made a great closing for a booth rep who had just walked through a live demo and conversation.

There are a few big benefits to this:

– Your booth staff have a pretty linear, and well-tooled approach to engaging booth visitors and capturing leads without intermediate steps like business card collection or badge scanning.
– Leads are instantly captured into Pardot, associated with the trade show campaign, and now easily sent an auto-responder email with links to the requested content assets. The prospect can access them on their mobile device, view them in the hotel room, forward them to colleagues, and doesn’t need to take any paper home on the airplane. And it’s all TRACKED activity.
– You can work in the background (or add an exposed “inputted by” field) to assign leads to reps right away, so that’s taken care of before you get home from the event.

My only caution will be that your total leads captured per show may decrease quite a bit…which is actually a good thing, but needs to be managed optically. By capturing leads this way, you’re automatically filtering out a lot of people who aren’t really interested in your product but might say yes to a business card drop or badge scan (especially if there’s a prize involved). So your total QUALIFIED leads captured won’t drop, and may even increase. But you’re going to filter out a lot of the crap that normally gets collected in a trade show booth, and the total number will be lower because of that.

I’m currently suffering with a very helpful customer who has forwarded on my email with landing page links. I’ve been receiving leads who haven’t properly cleared the form data with the “Not Name. Click Here” feature.

Can I somehow use this Kiosk function to create generic links in emails that do not link the pass along person to the original addressee?

Hi Jim — if you use this option on forms, data will not be pre-filled into the form (e.g. it will always be as though they clicked “Not You”) so that should work for what you want to accomplish. You may want to set up a test and send yourself or a co-worker an an email with these non-cookied forms.

Ah that makes sense. There are still a few things to think about in that scenario:

1. The link “click” action would still be associated with the wrong person (e.g. it would get credited for the forwarder).
2. The form submission would be fine since it is cookieless (e.g. it wouldn’t be associated with the wrong person).
3. The person receiving the forward would still be tracked as though they were the original recipient so any pages they view or cookied forms (e.g. if they wander back to your site and fill out a normal form) would be associated with the original recipient.

Unfortunately there is no way around 1&3 with a tracked email unless the person uses the forward to a friend feature (the social sharing icons) or clicks “not you” on a form later to sort of refresh themselves.

As a developer of Paperless systems, I thank you! It is hard to practice what we preach by handing paper out at a conference. We have developed work arounds in the past so I am so excited about this feature!